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Of phenomena of this sphere some derive from the Kosmic
Circuit and some not: we must take them singly and mark them off,
assigning to each its origin.
The gist of the whole matter lies in the consideration that Soul
governs this All by the plan contained in the Reason-Principle
and plays in the All exactly the part of the particular principle
which in every living-thing forms the members of the organism and
adjusts them to the unity of which they are portions; the entire
force of the Soul is represented in the All, but, in the parts,
Soul is present only in proportion to the degree of essential
reality held by each of such partial objects. Surrounding every
separate entity there are other entities, whose approach will
sometimes be hostile and sometimes helpful to the purpose of its
nature; but to the All taken in its length and breadth each and
every separate existent is an adjusted part, holding its own
characteristic and yet contributing by its own native tendency to
the entire life-history of the Universe.
The soulless parts of the All are merely instruments; all their
action is effected, so to speak, under a compulsion from outside
themselves.
The ensouled fall into two classes. The one kind has a motion of
its own, but haphazard like that of horses between the shafts but
before their driver sets the course; they are set right by the
whip. In the Living-Being possessed of Reason, the
nature-principle includes the driver; where the driver is
intelligent, it takes in the main a straight path to a set end.
But both classes are members of the All and co-operate towards
the general purpose.
The greater and most valuable among them have an important
operation over a wide range: their contribution towards the life
of the whole consists in acting, not in being acted upon; others,
but feebly equipped for action, are almost wholly passive; there
is an intermediate order whose members contain within themselves
a principle of productivity and activity and make themselves very
effective in many spheres or ways and yet serve also by their
passivity.
Thus the All stands as one all-complete Life, whose members, to
the measure in which each contains within itself the Highest,
effect all that is high and noble: and the entire scheme must be
subordinate to its Dirigeant as an army to its general,
"following upon Zeus"- it has been said- "as he proceeds towards
the Intelligible Kind."
Secondary in the All are those of its parts which possess a less
exalted nature just as in us the members rank lower than the
Soul; and so all through, there is a general analogy between the
things of the All and our own members- none of quite equal rank.
All living things, then- all in the heavens and all elsewhere-
fall under the general Reason-Principle of the All- they have
been made parts with a view to the whole: not one of these parts,
however exalted, has power to effect any alteration of these
Reason-Principles or of things shaped by them and to them; some
modification one part may work upon another, whether for better
or for worse; but there is no power that can wrest anything
outside of its distinct nature.
The part effecting such a modification for the worse may act in
several ways.
It may set up some weakness restricted to the material frame. Or
it may carry the weakness through to the sympathetic Soul which
by the medium of the material frame, become a power to
debasement, has been delivered over, though never in its essence,
to the inferior order of being. Or, in the case of a material
frame ill-organized, it may check all such action [of the Soul]
upon the material frame as demands a certain collaboration in the
part acted upon: thus a lyre may be so ill-strung as to be
incapable of the melodic exactitude necessary to musical effect.
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